


as certain dark things are to be loved

by greekdemigod



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Canon-Compliant, F/F, Post-3x04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 21:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8506984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: It's all her choice now. She chooses rehab. She chooses getting better. She chooses herself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK THAT EPISODE. Askhsf, I'm still so angry about it. Luisa deserves so much better.  
> This is the first of mANY fics that'll attempt to fix the canon, I won't stop writing them until I feel like Luisa has gotten the treatment she deserves.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

It’s the first time Luisa Alver gets to choose her own rehabilitation center, so she picks something as radically contrary to the Peaceful Odyssey Rehabilitation Center and Miami as she can find. Norfolk, Virginia is the kind of place where trees shake multi-colored leaves off in the Fall and mornings freeze the breath on your lips. Norfolk Recovery Partnership is a cold, clean compound filled to the brim with warm, caring people.

She is given a winter coat, a safe space, and all the time.

It is unlike any rehab experience she has ever had. They are always different, because she never relapsed for entirely the same reason, but it has always been just another shade of self-torture. It has felt like failure, like disappointment, like punishment, like some horrible joke, like dying.

It has never felt empowering.

She _chose_ this. She actively chose to put herself first, to prioritize her _own_ well-being, her mental health. Her recovery. She is going to get better.

It is the most empowering experience of her life.

But she also feels weak.

Because she can’t stop seeing **_her_** everywhere. Rose is the kind nurse that gives her a second blanket because she gets so cold at night; Rose is the volunteering woman that runs a hand through her hair when she starts to drowse from her evening pills; Rose is the addict that hugs her after a particularly grueling group session.

Knowing that Rose could look like _anyone_ makes it impossible for her to stop thinking about the possibility that she could be here, at the compound, close enough in case Luisa needs her, but giving her space and time until then. She still can’t stop hoping that Rose will come back for her one last time.

Somehow, despite the constant distraction of trying to figure out if her ex-girlfriend is around, Luisa still manages to make some progress. The therapists here don’t know her yet, so she gets to start with a clean slate.

She gets to tell them in a way she could never those at the Peaceful Odyssey, who were deep in her father’s pocket first and her brother’s second. Luisa could never trust them not to pass on the things she said to them.

But it’s different here. And she figures it all out.

The root of her problems isn’t that she is a bad person (sister, daughter, lover), although all her life she has been telling herself that she is.

It’s that she _believes_ it—in such a strong way that it poisons her, fills her lungs with rot and decay, her dreams with death and despair.

It’s that, as a consequence, she feels like she deserves all the bad things that have happened to her, continue to happen to her, as if the cosmos has nothing in store for her but to get hurt at every step, around every corner.

It’s the knowledge that the people who she has always held closest and dearest have never led her to believe otherwise, have never tried to make her see herself otherwise.

How very telling, isn’t it?

It hurts.

Still, when one day she is taken out of one of the leisure rooms because a tall, dark, handsome man is here to see her, she hopes it to be Rafael. She knows better than to _expect_ , but she hopes.

It isn’t Rafael.

“Luisa, hello!”

Her first visitor in two months’ time is Rogelio de la Vega.

“Rogelio... What are you doing here?”

He hugs her—full body, arms around her shoulder, her head resting against his chest where she can hear the reassuring thump of his big, kind heart. “You need a friend, and Rogelio de la Vega is the best friend you can have.”

She proposes they go to the family room, where visitors usually get to talk to those they’re visiting, but Rogelio counter-proposes they take a walk instead. Like a true gentleman, he helps her into her coat and makes sure she is all buttoned-up before he pushes the door open to the beautiful outside world.

There is a significant garden to the compound, all flat and crisp, frozen grass and winding pathways and benches. Patients can be seen at all times. But it’s still nice as they fall into the same rhythm and let crunching footsteps carry them away from the squat, grey building that had looked so daunting to her upon arrival and now like the kind of neat order the mind needs not to wipe out.

Her extremities freeze exposed raw to the air outside, but Luisa likes the way the tip of her nose and her hands tingle. Curling her fingers sends them all the way through her blood stream.

“How are you doing?” he asks; a smile she recognizes from one of his scenes she watched etched on a face that has become surprisingly well-known to her. A rerun of one of his telenovelas comes on right after lunch hour and she has taken to watching the episodes.

His smile is concerned and kind, and maybe a little hopeful.

She can’t remember _Rafael_ ever looking at her like that.

Maybe that’s why she’s honest. “Terrible.” _Her_ smile is wry, a little hurt, a little tired. “I don’t know if I can go back to my old life now that I see just how bad it’s been.”

“You are a tiny person, but your pain is very big.” He pulls her into his side and rests his cheek on top of her head for a moment.

It is the most intensely gratifying feeling to be understood so simply. Rogelio doesn’t try to tell her what to do, give her advice, or change the way she thinks about the life she has put on hold to be here. He just walks with her, and after a while of silence he tells her about a role he got on an American movie and about reaching another milestone on Twitter, and after some minutes of that she tells him about therapy and playing badminton.

By the time they have looped back to the entrance, Luisa is red-cheeked, wind-blown, teeth chattering, but smiling wide and breathing deep and feeling real and truly well.

“I brought you some presents,” Rogelio says as they stand awkwardly in front of the door, watched openly by curious nurses and patients alike. He opens up his purse and hands over a lined journal and a bobble-head figurine of his character on _Passions of Santos_. “And there will be a gift basket arriving tomorrow. I treat my fans and friends well.”

There are no words. There is no way to express her gratitude, not for the gifts themselves but the gesture of them, him _being here_ although it was just one evening of watching telenovelas and using an acting technique to break her out of the intricate ensnarement of her own bad habits and notions.

“Thank you,” she says a thousand times, it feels like, as she hugs him goodbye.

It will never be enough.

* * *

She could do many different things with the journal; keep a diary, make lists, fill every last line with poetry that sustains her soul, make up ridiculous stories. But she chooses to write letters.

It isn’t the first time she spends the last dregs of a rehab run writing letters, but the content has changed. They aren’t filled with groveling and regret, her desperate attempts to make amendments so she still has a family to come home to. She pours out all her hurt on the pages instead, all the wrongs they have done her.

She won’t send them because she could never hurt their feelings the way they did hers—and because her parents are too dead to read them, her brother too stuck in his ways to see how he has failed her, and her ex-girlfriend because she wants to say those things to Rose in person.

Because she isn’t choosing Rafael anymore.

But she isn’t choosing Rose, either.

Luisa is choosing herself. Her own happiness, her own life outside of all the expectations that chained her tight when she was younger.

And she chooses to give Rose a chance. One last try at starting a life together, at dating, at loving.

Because Rose is the love of her life and Luisa owes it to herself to try and make it work one last time.

One letter she does mean to be delivered. The envelope says nothing more than ‘ _Rose_ ’ and the letter no more than a few lines on how she feels strong enough to head out again, to break from her family and its legacy, and to settle somewhere. Get her life back on the rails again, get a job or her license back.

She couldn’t be sure Rose received it, because she didn’t find out if she was at the compound with her or not, but Luisa asked her to meet her outside the domain on the day she gets released.

And there she is. Unrecognizable to everyone, in a coat that shields most of her face and all her hair tucked beneath a woolen hat, but Luisa sees right through the disguise and into blue eyes that make her shiver.

Luisa will always feel a dizzying rush when seeing Rose, a wild fluttering going all the way through her. And she also no longer denies that she is a little scared of her, too; that some of the trust between them is corrupted.

But they can heal and grow and become strong again.

She falls into Rose’s arms and is home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I was a little meh about the ending, so I'd love to know what you guys think.


End file.
